The cooperative Fruta Feia (“ugly fruit”, in Portuguese) has been preventing the waste of so-called “ugly” fruit in Portugal, that are not usually sold in markets.
Better World Fashion produces new quality products from waste materials. Their primary material, leather, is from discarded post-consumer products collected by NGOs.
Mutualia, a social services and medical care provider in the Basque Country, Spain, has installed water fountains connected to the public water network to use tap water instead of buying bottled water.
In 2018, Hjørring Municipality decided to embark on a pilot project to increase the recovery and recycling of bricks when procuring demolition services for two buildings at the end of their functional life. Once cleared, the sites were destinated to be a part of a new climate adaptation project including a new rainwater collection basin and a recreational area.
The city of Ludwigsburg in Germany has a sustainable development strategy that includes the use of procurement to achieve its sustainability goals, instructing all public procurement departments to follow “Cradle to Cradle”principles in their procurement and awarding criteria.
In 2018, the Croatian city of Koprivnica needed to replace a prefabricated kindergarten. Instead of demolishing the building entirely, Koprivnica opted for Green Public Procurement (GPP) and aimed to maintain as much of the physical structure as possible, while refurbishing and improving it.
FOREWEAR is a project based in the Czech Republic. It collects unwanted clothing from company employees and donates them to charity organisations. Part of the material is recycled and, together with surpluses from textile industrial productions, is then used to produce recycled products printed with companies' branding.
EcoProtech has developed the EPAD (EcoProtech Advanced Digestion) technology. EPAD is based on a continuous, industrial scale, anaerobic digestion process.
On average, a European citizen produces half a ton of waste a year. This amounts to 2.5 billion tons yearly for the entire European Union.
The Joint Initiative on Circular Economy (JICE) is a partnership between the EU’s largest national promotional banks and institutions and the European Investment Bank to invest at least €10 billion in the circular economy by 2023.
It provides loans, equity investment, guarantees, innovative financing structures and technical assistance.
The initiative will support projects that prevent and eliminate waste, increase resource efficiency and promote circular business models. Eligible projects can be submitted to the respective JICE partners.
This report analyses the scope of the plastic industry for the economy, the planet and society, as well as the policies at European and Spanish context to move towards a new plastic economy. Besides, the trade offs for companies are identified as key challenges.
Finally, the report shows the best practices of eleven companies from different sectors.
The Pop-Machina project is an EU-funded research project exploring the maker movement contributions to cities’ transition to the circular economy.
This 2nd deliverable 'Mapping the maker community ecosystem and the urban metabolism processes' draws a collection of definitions to characterise the circular maker movement. A set of original tools, including a decision tree, a taxonomy, indicators and maps of the circular maker movement are developed to delineate the circular maker movement, with a focus on the Pop-Machina seven pilot cities.
Eventually, pilot story-boards present the current status of the circular maker movement in the city, with the disclosure of the circular maker passports, characterising the movement in each pilot.
The post-COVID-19 recovery plan should be extensive, as the effects of the pandemic on people and economy have, in many cases, been devastating. The recovery plan must also fully support the green transition to guarantee resilience over the long term.
The circular economy has the potential to raise EU GDP by billions of euros, and create around 700,000 extra jobs by 2030. With this in mind, the economic approach should be an integral part of that recovery. It is one of the messages of a new EUROCITIES policy statement on the EU Circular Economy Action Plan that sets out how cities, as significant engines for economic growth, can drive the circular economy to unlock economic, environmental and social benefits.
Greater circularity and more efficient use of materials present new opportunities for further reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
A new methodology can help to identify which circular economy actions in each sector can make the most promising contributions to meeting targets to reduce emissions and to achieving climate neutrality in Europe.
In the buildings sector, selected circular economy actions can lead to reductions of up to 61 % in the materials-related greenhouse gases emitted across buildings’ life cycles.
However, on behalf of the European chemical distribution sector, particularly the numerous SMEs it represents, Fecc would like to raise the following points:
increasing recycled content in products while ensuring their performance and safety is paramount
stakeholders from across the board – private companies, academia, and public bodies – can all benefit from circularity in the distribution sector
promoting circular public procurement to empower consumers and public buyers is necessary and must be supported post-COVID-19.
FoodDrinkEurope - an organisation representing Europe's food and drinks industry - has designed a website explaining what the industry is currently doing to enhance a resource-efficient circular economy.
Entitled Ingredients for a Circular Economy, the website specifically looks at the areas of farming, manufacturing, sustainable packaging and consumers, providing numerous examples of how the European food and drinks industry is helping to promote circular economy. The website also sets out policy recommendations for how to unlock further sustainable growth and innovation for a resource-efficient circular economy in the food and drinks industry.
Zero Waste Scotland has commissioned a study on Measuring Scotland's progress towards a circular economy, in order to assess the value of existing metrics and identify the most effective ways to drive and track progress on reducing our carbon emissions.
The study has concluded that no single metric could be used to monitor Scotland’s progress on adopting a circular economy. However, a range of metrics could be developed and used collectively.
Two datasets in particular (a Scottish material flows accounts and Scotland’s carbon footprint) will be key to this as the country progresses towards a circular economy.
The Alliance for Flame Retardant Free Furniture welcomes the new Circular Economy Action Plan and calls on EU institutions to address the unnecessary use of chemicals preventing circularity and the achievement of climate goals, such as toxic flame retardants in furniture, which endanger people’s and firefighters’ health as they migrate out of products and can lead to increased fire toxicity.
The use of such retardants is a historical, hazardous and ineffective practice which is not proven to reduce the number of fires. It is at odds with circularity objectives and their presence in furniture runs counter to the ambition to introduce and increase circularity.
Ensuring fire safety is a must, but it needs to be done in ways that are not hazardous.
In 2016, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) set up a Symbiosis Users Network (SUN) to boostindustrial symbiosis in Italy. The network promotes circular economy models through industrial symbiosis by focusing on operational issues.
SUN's 2019 conference was devoted to Good practices of industrial symbiosis in Italy and the contribution of regional policies as a strategic lever. The event, co-organised by SUN, Ecomondo and ENEA was held in Rimini (IT) on 7 November 2019 at Ecomondo - a leading event in Europe for new circular economy models.
Click on 2017 and 2019 to see the reports on SUN's two conferences.
Reports on ENEA-promoted conferences on industrial symbiosis are available here.
The Circular Week is an international series of events and initiatives dedicated to circular economy and sustainable development all over Europe. It aims to promote the idea of circular economy, support sustainable business models and establish cooperation between stakeholders.
Its 5th edition, from 3 to 9 October 2022, will include workshops, debates, meetings, expert panels and matchmaking sessions for business. Its culminating event is the Mazovia Circular Congress on 7 October.
A circular economy plays a key role in halting and reversing global biodiversity loss. Join the webinar on 13 June to discuss the findings of Sitra’s new study and its linkages to key business and policy measures.
As the Horizon 2020 research programme becomes Horizon Europe, what better time to see how great ideas turned into real projects? LOOPS will be the opportunity to show what cutting-edge research has been produced, and what changes it can bring to our communities.
For those who are not familiar with it, LOOPS is a live webinar series committed to spotlighting innovation in the circular economy. The topic of the episode on 3 June will be the EU Soil Strategy.
As the Horizon 2020 research programme becomes Horizon Europe, what better time to witness how great ideas turned into real projects? LOOPS will be the opportunity to show what cutting-edge research has been produced, and what changes it can bring to our communities.
For those who are not familiar with it, LOOPS is a live webinar series committed to spotlighting innovation in the field of the circular economy and sustainability. The topic of the episode on 1 June will be how digital technology can make the economy more resillient.
EU ETV (Environmental Technology Verification) is a circular economy tool that provides third-party verification of the performance of innovative technologies to help them enter the market. The EU ETV Secretariat invites you to attend the 5th ETV Stakeholder Forum: De-risking the adoption of green technologies for a sustainable industrial transition. The hybrid event will be held on 1 June 2022 in Brussels at EIT House and online.
Achieving circularity for plastics and meeting ambitious plastic waste reduction goals is a complex mission. Flexible plastic packaging is a growing and challenging segment of the plastic stream that needs its own strategies and investments to progress towards circularity.
Join the webinar on 18 May on Advances in collection and sorting technologies for flexible packaging, focusing on innovation in flexible packaging.
The second Circular City Centre (C3) webinar in the morning of 17 May will focus on circular city actions and solutions. A new C3 guidance document on this topic will be presented and cities will share information and experiences about their circular actions and initiatives.
LOOPS is a live webinar series committed to spotlighting innovation in the field of circular economy. The topic of this episode on 13 May will be bio-based resins and coatings, processed by two Horizon 2020 projects: Lignicoat and TomaPaint.
The Interreg MED Green Growth Community will celebrate its final event in person in Brussels on 1 June. The event will highlight the role of businesses and public authorities in the transition towards climate neutrality, sharing the project’s best practices in supporting these actors across the Euro-Mediterranean region.
The final event will also emphasise the importance of cooperation to boost the circular economy by putting forward the Community’s policy recommendations.
DiCE Lab organizes another interesting webinar on digitalization applied to the circular economy on 31 May. This time the focus is on the Internet of Things for the Circular Economy.
PackAlliance aims to modernise Higher Education curricula to better serve the plastic packaging sector's labour market needs. It has therefor prepared a questionnaire to gather information on the skills needed in the circular economy applied to this sector. Which skills are vital in the plastic packaging transition to circular economy?
ACI’s Future of Polyolefins Summit, on 20 and 21 January 2021 in Antwerp, will provide the perfect opportunity to meet with leading executives and experts from across the entire value chain.
Taking the momentum of the European Commission launching the new EU growth strategy, the European Green Deal, over 120 project representatives and policymakers gathered at the Workshop “Innovative services and products for the circular economy” organised by EASME in Brussels.
Le Fonds ING pour une Economie plus Circulaire apporte son soutien à celles et ceux qui exercent leurs compétences et leur métier en vue d’une utilisation optimale des ressources naturelles.
During the financial year 2019, the Plastics Technology Centre AIMPLAS presented more than 80 circular economy projects, taught 25 courses on the topic and sponsored 26 talks by its experts.
Between 2018 and 2019, knowledge brokerage between Slovenia and Portugal took place on waste collection and treatment, reuse and repair facilities as well as communication strategies.
Have a look at this two-hour webinar recording of 15 April 2020 on Brazilian circular capacity building. International speakers share their views on rethinking our business models and making them more sustainable in the wake of COVID-19 crisis.
The Commission is working with the Member States to keep the green lanes for European waste companies open so that it can be shipped without delay, become the resource for another industry or get its appropriate treatment in the EU. This is an essential task to protect Europe's health and environment and keep the circular economy moving ahead.
The City of Amsterdam aims to halve its use of raw material and resources by 2030, and achieve a fully circular economy by 2050. To this effect, its new circular economy strategy will use an adapted version of British economist Kate Raworth's "doughnut model".
How can we best equip people to transform the fashion industry from the inside out? (Re)education is one promising avenue – and there is a lot to learn!
